“The Journal’s newsroom development team, headed by Erin Sparling, decided to try out hedcuts as animated gifs, and first built a mockup using Grumpy Cat–the hedcut that went with one of our most popular A-heds. ‘It just seemed that, since we were designing this with the Internet in mind, you have to start with the core essence of the Internet, which I think is Grumpy Cat,’ Mr. Sparling said.

“The gif hedcut of the scowling cat moves slowly, pursing his lips and blinking. ‘I liked the pace,’ he said. ‘It’s slow enough so you would second guess yourself, wondering, ‘is that really moving?’’

“But the test was mocked up using Photoshop, and the quality wasn’t what the team wanted. For the next effort, the Scalia puppet, the team needed multiple frames of animation drawn by one of the Journal’s dot-artist illustrators.”

Chris Roush is the Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

This website is operated by Chris Roush, who teaches “Writing and Reporting,” “Business Reporting,” “Economics Reporting,” and “Business and the Media” at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.